Education

By Erin Heger As GOP-majority state legislatures pass laws aimed at drastically restricting access to abortion care, Republican lawmakers are seeking to control education and public messaging about abortion, pregnancy, and reproductive health. Ohio Republicans are pushing a measure that would create a public school curriculum infusing anti-abortion languageinto health and science education standards and restricting students’ access …

The Ancestor’s Trail is an annual event, based on Richard Dawkins’ book ‘The Ancestor’s Tale’. This year’s Ancestor’s Trail will take place on Saturday, July 27th in Epping Forest and the Lee Valley Country Park.  The five trails that make up the main Trail – human, gazelle, amphibian, plant and bacteria – will follow the paths of previous …

By Paul O’Donnell A Catholic high school teacher who was fired because he’s in a same-sex marriage sued the Archdiocese of Indianapolis on Wednesday, accusing it of discrimination and interfering with his teaching contract. Joshua Payne-Elliott is suing the archdiocese in Marion County court and seeking unspecified compensatory, emotional distress and other damages. Payne-Elliott taught …

By Hemant Mehta A Ten Commandments plaque inside on Ohio middle school has finally been taken down. Before this week, you would’ve seen it as you walk into the auditorium at Welty Middle School in the city of New Philadelphia. It was apparently a gift from the Class of 1926 and had remained there ever since. But …

By Tim Stelloh A Catholic high school in Indiana said Sunday that it is firing an openly gay teacher to avoid “forfeiting our Catholic identity” — the second school in the Archdiocese of Indianapolis to publicly reckon with the issue of homosexuality in a week. In an open letter, officials with Cathedral High School in Indianapolis …

By Jack Jenkins The archbishop of Indianapolis has revoked the Catholic designation of a Jesuit high school in the city after administrators refused to fire a teacher who is married to a same-sex partner. According to a statement released by the archdiocese on Thursday (June 20), Archbishop Charles C. Thompson has sent a canonical decree …

By Hemant Mehta Like several other Republican-dominated states using the Project Blitz playbook, Alabama is on the verge of passing a “Bible literacy” bill. In theory, these classes would be fine since they’re intended to teach the Bible in an objective way — it’s hard to understand literary allusions, for example, without a basic understanding …

By Hemant Mehta South Dakota’s Republican Governor Kristi Noem recently signed into law Senate Bill 55, a bill that requiresall public schools to display “In God We Trust” signs in a prominent place beginning next school year. But the bill itself is fairly vague beyond those rules… and last night, during a meeting of the Rapid City School Board, members of …

By Julie Zauzmer GLASGOW, Ky. — Todd Steenbergen leads worship services in church sometimes, but today he was preaching in a different venue: the public-school classroom where he teaches. “A lot of people will look at the Beatitudes and glean some wisdom from them,” he told the roomful of students, pointing toward the famous blessings he …

By Hemant Mehta A video from the Muslim American Society Islamic Center in Philadelphia, taken in mid-April, shows a bunch of kids reciting poems and singing songs… which is perfectly normal for any religious center. Except that the script here calls for the celebration of those who “crush the treacherous ones” before saying of their …

By Rebecca Klein Ten years ago, “Daily Show” correspondent Jason Jones sat down to interview a pastor in the classic style of the program ― the correspondent played straight while talking to someone with ridiculous ideas. The interviewee, James Manning, had plenty. Manning, the pastor at Atlah World Missionary Church in Harlem, was famous for …

By Hemant Mehta If you walk into the auditorium in Welty Middle School in New Philadelphia, Ohio, you’ll see this Ten Commandments plaque… for some strange reason. There’s no explanation of it. There’s no context. It’s just a Christian display that says things like “Thou shalt have no other gods before me” and other examples of religious …